Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

Developing Flows
Node-RED allows you to quickly start developing applications by dragging in nodes and wiring them
together to create flows. This can be a great way to get started, but as flows grow over time, it can
lead to applications that are harder to maintain.

This guide provides some recommendations and best practices for how to create Node-RED flows that
will be reusable, easier to maintain and more robust.

This guide assumes that you are already familiar with the basic usage of Node-RED. If you are looking
for more information about using Node-RED, the User Guide and Cookbook are good resources to help
you get started.

1. Flow structure

When you first start using Node-RED, you probably start adding all of your nodes to the same tab in
the editor. You may import some example flows others have shared, or build prototype flows to test
different things out.

Over time, that can lead to a mess of nodes and wires that make it hard to find particular parts of the
flow. Putting some thought into how to structure your flows at the start of any development project
can help keep them organised and make them easier to maintain.

The main method of organising flows in Node-RED is by separating them across multiple tabs within
the editor. There are a few different strategies that can be used to do that. If you can identify separate
logical components of your application, consider putting them on separate tabs.

For a home-automation application, you could put the flow logic for each room on a separate tab to
reflect the physical space. Or you may want to separate the flows based on function - so all lighting-
related flows go on one tab and heating on another.

If you are building an HTTP API backend, each tab could represent a separate type of resource the API
accesses. The goal should be to make it easy to “read” an individual flow from start to finish. Keeping
it on a single tab can help do that.

Another consideration is whether you are working alongside other developers on the same Node-RED
application. It is much easier to manage the merging of changes if they are on separate tabs. If you
have developers with different roles or specialisations, consider how that may affect how your flows
are organised.

Making reusable flows

As you build your flows, you may find some common parts that you want to reuse in multiple places.
You should avoid having multiple copies of those common parts spread across your flows as they
become harder to maintain - you end up with multiple places to apply fixes and could easily overlook
one. Node-RED provides two different ways of creating reusable flows - Links nodes and Subflows.

Link nodes let you create a flow that can jump between tabs in the
editor - they add a virtual wire from the end of one flow to the start
of another.
 Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

Subflows let you create a new node in the palette whose internal
implementation is described as a flow. You can then add new
instances of the subflow wherever you would a normal node.

There are some important differences between the two

approaches. Link nodes cannot be used in the middle of a flow, where messages are passed over the
link and then return when the other flow completes. They can only be used to start or end a flow.
They can also be connected to more than one other link node. This lets you pass messages out to
multiple other flows, or have multiple flows pass messages into a single flow. They can be used within
a single tab to help flows wrap across the workspace without having lots of wires crossing from right
to left.

Subflows appear as regular nodes so can be used at any point in a flow. However each instance of the
subflow is independent of the others. Any flow context inside the subflow will be scoped to the
individual instances. If the subflow creates a connection to a remote system, each instance will create
its own connection.

Customising subflows

When creating subflows, you may want to be able to customise their behaviour in some way. For
example, changing what MQTT topic it publishes to. One pattern for doing that is by setting msg.topic
on every message passed to the subflow. But that requires adding a Change node in front of every
subflow instance in order to set the desired value.

An easier way for doing this is by using Subflow properties. These are properties that can be set on
the subflow instance and appear as environment variables inside the subflow. In the MQTT example,
you could first configure the node to publish to ${MY_TOPIC}.

Then add MY_TOPIC as a subflow property.

 Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

When a user edits an individual instance they can then provide a custom value for MY_TOPIC for that
instance.

This pattern can be applied to any node configuration field that lets you enter the value directly. It
doesn’t currently work for fields that are exposed as checkboxes or other custom UI elements.

Managing state information

Another consideration is how to manage any state information in your flows. For example, keeping a
count of how many messages pass through a flow, or the current state of an external sensor.

Node-RED provides the Context system for managing state within the runtime. The context can be
scoped to the same tab, subflow or made available globally.

If a piece of state information is only needed by nodes on a particular tab, you should use flow-scoped
rather than global. You should also choose context variable names with care - make sure they are
descriptive and easy to identify.

Another option is to manage the state outside of Node-RED - such as using retained MQTT messages,
or a database of some sort. Those options do add an external dependency to manage and aren’t as
conveniently integrated as Context, but they can also be used alongside context and not as a complete
replacement. For example, where you want to share the state information across multiple Node-RED
instances, or in the case of MQTT, be able to trigger a flow whenever a value changes.

Customising flows for different platforms

Environment variables can be used more widely within Node-RED to create flows that can be
customised for different platforms without having to make manual changes. For example, you may
have a flow that you plan to run on multiple devices, but each device should subscribe to its own
unique MQTT topic.

As with the subflow example above, you could configure the MQTT node to publish to ${MY_TOPIC}
and then set that as an environment variable before running Node-RED. That allows those device-
specific customisations to be maintained separately to the flows that should be common to all devices.

The same approach can be used when the flows might run on different operating systems - where the
path to a file used by the flows may be different depending on the OS. The Inject and Change nodes
are able to access environment variables using either the “env” option in their TypedInput. The
Function node can use the env.get() function

Error handling

Node-RED provides the Catch and Status nodes as ways of building flows that can respond to errors.
For more information about how they can be used, refer to the user guide.
 Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

As there is no direct visual association between a Catch node and the nodes it targets, you should
consider how to position them in order to keep the flows readable.Placing them close to the parts of
the flow they correspond to can help, but you should take care not cause your flows to become
overcrowded.

Another approach is to group all of the error handling flows below the main flow - making the ‘good’
path clearly distinct from the error paths.

Giving your Catch nodes a clear name is also very important to help easily identify the scenarios they
are intended to handle. Which ever approach you choose, try to be consistent across your different
flows.

2. Message design

The messages that pass through a flow are plain JavaScript objects that can have properties set on
them. They usually have a payload property - this is the default property that most nodes will work
with.

For more information about messages in Node-RED you should read the Working with messages
section of the user guide. This section looks at some of the choices you need to make when deciding
how to structure the messages in your flows.

Working with msg.payload

When creating flows, the choice of properties used on a message will largely be determined by what
the nodes in the flow require.

Most nodes will expect to work with msg.payload and that will guide most of the choices you make.

For example, consider a flow that receives an id in the payload of an MQTT message. It then uses that
id to query a database to find a matching record.

The database node will put its result in the payload of the message it sends - overwriting the original
id value. If the flow needs to be able to reference that id value later on, it can use a Change node to
copy the value to another property that will not get overwritten.

This highlights an important principle: nodes should not modify or remove properties on messages
that are not related to their functionality.
 Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

For example, in most cases, a Function node should send on the same message object it received
rather than create a new message object.

Using msg.topic

A number of nodes also treat msg.topic as having

special meaning. It might be used to identify the
source of the message, or to identify different
‘streams’ of messages on the same flows. It also
gets displayed in the Debug sidebar with every
message.

For example, the MQTT In node will set msg.topic to

topic the message was received on. The Delay node
can then be configured to rate limit messages
according to their topic.

Whilst your flow may not use nodes that depend on msg.topic directly, it can be used to give extra
contextual information about a message. But you should take care if you later introduce nodes to the
flow that do depend on its value.

Designing message properties

When designing a node or subflow for reuse, the message properties it works with and the properties
it sets are all part of the API it exposes. As with all APIs, it needs to be designed with care and attention.
This applies to flows as well.

One approach is to put everything under the payload. For example:

This may be convenient to keep the data together, but it can also lead to a lot of moving properties
around as later nodes expect to operate on msg.payload and not a property underneath it.

A different approach, as seen by the Twitter node, is to put the most ‘interesting’ information into the
payload, in this case the text of a tweet, and put the complete metadata the API also provides into a
separate msg.tweet property. There is not a single right answer to how to structure the message, but
it should focus on how the node or flow is going to be used in the most common cases.

As with programming in general, the choice of good property names is also important. They should be
self-describing to help with later debugging and understanding of the flow. For example,
msg.temperature is much more understandable than msg.t.

They should also avoid commonly used properties such as reset and parts that have special meaning
with some nodes.
 Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

3. Documenting flows

In any programming language, a vital part of creating easy-to-maintain code is to ensure it is also well
documented. Good documentation serves a number of purposes:

• Whilst everything may seem obvious as you are building a flow, your future self will thank you for
providing some description of the details when you come back to it later.
• If you are sharing a flow with others, it will help them understand what it is doing and how it works.
• If a flow provides an external API you will want to document how that API should be used - what
properties or parameters are expected.
• When you write documentation, the act of writing out the behaviour could well help you identify
parts that could be improved.

In a visual programming environment like Node-RED, the documentation can take a number of forms.

• The flows can be read in the workspace to see the logical flow of events. You should make sure the
purpose of each node is easily identified and that they are well laid out to minimise how much
wires cross each other.
• Groups can be used to identify discrete sections of the flows.
• Moving commonly used parts into subflows can help reduce the visual complexity of the flow.
• More complete documentation can be added at the node, group or tab level.

Laying out flows

The flow structure section of this guide looked at how to arrange the logical components of your flows.
This section considers the visual appearance of the flow layout.

The goal is to make it easy to follow the flow without having to jump around the workspace or have
to follow multiple wires that cross each other and appear tangled.

The approach that gives the greatest legibility is to keep each unit of processing on a single horizontal
line wherever possible. The editor’s default behaviour of snapping nodes to a grid on the tab helps
keep them aligned.

If there is a node that has more than one output port, aligning the branched flow vertically makes it
easy to compare and contrast the flows.
 Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

When a flow gets too long, arranging some nodes vertically can be used to good effect. In the following
figure, some of the nodes are arranged vertically to imply a relationship between them. It is easier to
understand the nature of the overall flow if it is visually obvious what smaller sections it is comprised
of and how they relate to each other.

In some cases, these smaller sections may be candidates for moving to subflows that will reduce the
visual complexity of the flow. That is particular true if that smaller section could be reused elsewhere
in the flows.

Naming nodes

Most nodes have a name property that can be used to customise the label they display in the
workspace. This should be used to properly label the key points of a flow.

For example, if a Change node has a single rule that sets msg.payload to the current time, its default
label will be set msg.payload. That helps somewhat, but it doesn’t reveal the full purpose of the node.
A name of Get current time would be much clearer.

There is a balance to be considered here. The longer the label, the more space it needs in the flow.
The shorter the label, the less information it can share.

For some nodes, it might be appropriate to hide the label altogether to minimise the horizontal space
it uses in the flow - giving more room to other nodes.

Along with the label, nodes can also have a custom icon. For example, if you have a number of MQTT
In nodes for different types of device, customising the icon to match the type of device could be
helpful. This should be used with care as the icon is one of the main ways of identifying the type of a
particular node. Choosing good names for things applies just as much to the tabs and subflows used.

It is also very important for Link nodes. Without a name set, you have to use the Link node’s internal
ID when creating links between different tabs. That makes it hard to identify the right target node and
mistakes can happen. If you consider the Link nodes as providing APIs between the different tabs,
then a good choice of naming scheme will be needed. The names should clearly identify the start and
end point of each flow.
 Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

Adding port labels

If a node has multiple outputs it can be hard to follow the logic if it is not clear on what condition a
message may be sent from a particular output.

This is where adding port labels can help document the intended logic.

For example, the Switch node provides default labels for its outputs that are shown when the mouse
hovers over them. They can help quickly identify the purpose of each branch in the flow.

Whilst the default labels may be sufficient in the context of the flow itself, it is also possible to
customise labels to provide more detailed information.

Inline Comments

The Comment node can be used to add inline comments to the flow - both the node’s label, but also
its description that will show in the Information sidebar when selected.

By indenting the flows on the page, you can indicate an implied grouping of the different components.
 Developing Flows Node-RED | Ahmad Fauzi Firmansyah

Grouping nodes

A more explicit arrangement of the flows can be achieved by grouping related nodes together.

The background colour of each group can also be used to highlight different types of group.

Adding longer documentation

All of the techniques discussed so far relate to the visual appearance of the flows. In order to add more
in depth documentation, something more is needed.

Every node, group and tab can have longer-form documentation added under the Description tab in
their edit dialog. This help can be formatted using Markdown and including lists, tables and links. This
documentation is then displayed in the Information sidebar when the item is selected.

This longer format of documentation is useful where more explanation is needed of a flow’s purpose,
or some more complex logic needs to be described.

It is also useful where a flow provides an external API of some sort - providing as much detail as it
needed for other developers to use the API.